


Tea Break

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Community: dw_allsorts, Ficlet, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi-Era, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This once it doesn’t go quite the way it always does…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea Break

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "some old tragedy" over at dw_allsorts.

It went the way it always did: she found the Doctor, she saved him, and she fell back into the timestream – part of her _died_ – she fell –

Except something wasn’t quite right. Clara sat up in surprise to find she was in what had to be the TARDIS, but a more elaborately gothic interior than she had seen (yet). It even had fallen leaves drifting about the place – apart from her. “What the hell –?”

“Ah, you’re awake at last,” said the Doctor, giving her a wide smile. “Would you like some tea? China, Earl Grey, herbal – but _not_ the camomile – dreadful stuff. I’m not even sure it _is_ camomile and not artis weed from Helia, and you really don’t want that. I may even have a nice packet of PG Tips somewhere.”

Clara raised an eyebrow. “PG Tips’d be great, thanks. Or whatever else you’ve got that counts as normal tea – and definitely not the camomile.”

“Milk, sugar?” the Doctor enquired.

Clara looked around the TARDIS, all anachronistically wooden, with a ceiling like the night sky. This was bad. This was probably messing up the timeline and breaking half a dozen rules. Who knew what sort of damage that might do? She sighed. Trust the Doctor to be difficult. This was worse than the timestream, worse than Clarabel Oswald, children’s attendant on a big starliner, suddenly crashing and burning a little too literally. Same old story for her, same old tragedy, except it wasn’t, because it wasn’t her real self, only a part that came into being purely to stop a matching splinter of the Great Intelligence. She shivered, still enough Clarabel to freak out at the memory of her death, as well as being Clara worrying about time (and stupid befrilled variations on a perfectly good name, too). 

“Now, would you care to explain?” said the Doctor, passing her the promised cup of tea.

Clara took the tea. (Hey, strange crisis of the afterlife, possible end of the universe; might as well at least get a cup of tea in first, why not? It had been a long while, or maybe not very long, depending on which Clara Oswald you were talking about.) Then she shook her head at the Doctor. “You first. I definitely shouldn’t be here.”

“It won’t last,” he said, his voice shaded with sadness now, “but the TARDIS erected a stasis field around you. You’ve got time for the tea – oh, and a chocolate biscuit if you’d like one. Not much more, perhaps, but still – tea and biscuits and a nice cosy chat about exactly what sort of anomaly you are. You saved me, but I can’t save you, it seems. Terribly unfair, I’m afraid.”

Clara pulled a face, and from this point on Clarabel was forgotten forever. “Have a break, have a Kit-Kat?”

“I might have one somewhere,” the Doctor said, and half disappeared under the console, which she was pretty sure was not a sensible place to keep chocolate biscuits of any sort.

Clara shook her head. “Okay. I’ll take the tea and the biscuit, but you can’t keep me here – it’s too important, and I can’t explain, not to you of all people –”

“No, no, no,” said the Doctor, as he returned with a tin that contained no Kit-Kats, but it did hold half a packet of jammy dodgers, what looked like a dog biscuit, and a chocolate Hob-Nob. Clara took the Hob-Nob. “We’re here in a bubble of time that doesn’t exist. It stays between you, me, and the teapot. I would like to help if I can, but I’d also like to know exactly how you knew what Gilbert Ingledew was trying to do to the TARDIS. If you hadn’t, the old girl would have been in some serious difficulties.”

“You’re not supposed to notice, and I’m not supposed to tell you.”

“A paradox, eh?”

Clara nodded.

“And,” he added, “the old girl seems to think – well, it’s all quite impossible – but the readings – it’s almost as though both of you were part of my time stream. Isn’t that strange?”

“Seriously weird,” said Clara, holding onto the tea cup with both hands for the warmth, as if it was a mug. “Must be on the blink again.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Time takes care of most of these things, you know. I expect I forgot. Will forget. It seems to happen rather a lot lately. Now, you enjoy your tea. I think you could probably use a break.”

Clara drank the tea to avoid embarrassing them both with tears or something equally silly. She was so very tired of falling, of being everywhere at once, splintered and torn.

“I’ll look forward to meeting you,” the Doctor said. “I can see I’m going to make quite the impression.”

She grinned mistily. “You would say that.”

“So,” he said, stirring too much sugar into his tea with a spoon, “every time, you find me, you save me, you die?”

Clara shrugged. “Hey, well, look, sometimes there’s tea and biscuits.”

“It’s possible, then, that we’ll meet again,” said the Doctor, with a smile, as the TARDIS and everything in her started to fade away. Clara could no longer hold onto her suddenly unreal tea cup, though faintly, she could hear china breaking on the floor, even as she fell through it. And she could still hear the echo of the Doctor’s voice: “If we do, I promise to bring that Kit-Kat next time.”

“Liar,” she said, as she fell.


End file.
